Finding Style

Recently, I’ve been rethinking my photography. What do I like to shoot? How do I like to shoot? How do I want to edit? Are just a few of the questions I’ve been rolling around. I’ve only shot a handful of times all year because I was just not in the head space to shoot. I’m working my way out of that and asking myself what I want my style to be and if it’s important to have a style.

If you read all the top photo bloggers it’s all about finding your style. Instagram is a desaturated wonderland these days. I’ve tried the desaturated thing and sometimes I really like the look but it never quite seems right for my photos. I know I don’t like heavy handed HDR. I’m not really a naturalist and I do like to edit.

A couple of days ago I headed to my local greenway. We had some amazing clouds and I wanted to take advantage of the cloud cover to shoot flowers and anything else I saw. I decided against taking my macro and going with a more all purpose lens (Olympus 12-40mm 2.8) so I could only carry one lens. Limiting myself to one lens helps me frame my shot and not worry about switching lenses to get exactly the look I want.

When I got into Lightroom last night to edit I decided to do something crazy and completely change my workflow. Normally I go from top to bottom in the develop panel but decided to go from bottom to top and try to leave the top sliders alone as much as possible. I really played with colors and found some looks I really liked.

Anyway here are some of my experiments. Hopefully this inspires you to play around with your editing or the way you shoot.